April 28, 2024
As of Monday, Roaring River had risen from 60 CFS on Sunday to 682 CFS.
Fly fishing was good all week. Dry fly fishing was fantastic, with blue wing olives, caddis, and tricos hatched every day. We were catching trout all week on pheasant tails, burlaps, sow bugs, zebra midges, and scuds were all working. Black buggers, and olive buggers were good also.
As usual, glo balls, San Juan worms, mop flies and thread jigs were all working pretty good.
The 6x leaders were the best tippet to use most of the week, except on the dries, then 7X was the best.
With the water coming up, we can probably start using 5X on the buggers, nymphs and other flies we are fishing under the surface. With the CFS above 100, the dry fly fishing is a bit sketchy.
Powerbait will be the best thing to use this next week, especially if the water gets up and murky.
When the water is murky, the pink or the yellow power baits seem to be best, white and orange, and the pink were good all week.
Rooster tails will still work first thing in the morning, Spoons are pretty good in the higher dirtier water we will probably have this next week.
When the water gets up, the Powerbait is great, but you will need more weight. We were using 1/8egg sinkers on Sunday, but when the water gets up, its not uncommon to use slip sinkers as heavy as 1 ounce.
A simple river rig works great when the water is big, you can use heavy line, put the sinker on the heavier line, add a barrel swivel, and to the swivel add 18-24 inches of 4-pound mono or fluorocarbon line. You can use a bit more bait when the water is bigger. The trout can smell it better and locate it better if there is more bait on your line, even if the water gets real big, There are still trout in the river, as they are equipped to handle big water. They go to the bottom and wait out the big water.
A few get pushed around and a few get down stream, but most good healthy fish just hug the bottom until the flood recedes.
Good luck on the river this week!
Roaring River State Park trout-fishing tips are provided by Tim Homesley, owner of Tim’s Fly Shop, located at 23387 Hwy. 112.
